DAY EIGHTEEN: SISTER SPIT TOUR: BARD COLLEGE (Yeah Yeah Yeah!)

Holy crap, so we show up at Bard and it's like ... our gig is on the back porch of a barn ... outside ... in the freezing rain ... at night! ... next to woods which Kirk Read who is our resident gay redneck hunter/outdoorsman, wanders out into ....

But no it turns out it's a garage... a garage with a really crappy skateboard ramp on a muddy road just outside the maintenance compound where they ought to maybe pave the street they are on. We're all like, okay, this is cool, as we step through the mud in our useless California shoe wear .... (I'm wearing white vans... good call!)

So we set up our crap and then someone lets us in to the main garage area which actually turns out to have a stage and such, so not as weird as it first appeared. All of this running like an hour behind so that weird cool Bard people started appearing and disappearing and wandering around. One awesome girl with a WENDY O haircut, brilliant, and the weirdest coolest face ever, should have tried to chat with her but why ... they are just kids the college kids ... you talk to them and there just isn't anything there yet.....

I mention this girls' haircuts because I think that YEAh Yeah Yeah's were formed at Bard, or partially at least.

And also because HAIRCUTS MATTER. And a cool haircut by a single audience member makes a "medium" gig into a "good" gig. And this girl had a cute dress too. Wear cool clothes people so that I can have something to live for!

Anyway so then my friends Sally and La showed up and we had a reuninion and Sally got to meet everyone from the TOUR and La kept driving off somewhere because his wife teaches at Bard and needed a piece of pizza for some reason. La was a struggling photographer when Sally found him, now he is a big shot at the New York Times and married to a brilliant beautiful magazine editor ... The Sally Effect. In her effortless way she attracts the best and the brightest ....

So we did the Bard gig and hung out and the Bard kids were awesome and cute and strange and quiet. I spent a lot of time standing on the nearby Lacrosse field trying to channel my beloved dead grandfather in the darkness. He coached high school sports for forty years in New England. I am I suspect more New English than I really know. There's a strange sense of home for me there. I love kids too. Though I am constantly complaining about them (see above).

So we drove the next day to Colby Sawyer college in New Hampshire and had another subdued gig which was nevertheless fun and we went ape-shit at the college cafeteria in any event. I had ALL the dinner options. Meatloaf. Fettucine. Hamburger. And just kept eating until I couldn't move because I LOVE INSTITUTIONAL FOOD OF ANY KIND. (A food fascist I must be. I want my cottage cheese contained and supervised and not "free range".)

During my performance, I read a bit of RECOVERY ROAD which went well though I started to get choked up reading about the tragic love of Maddie and Stewart. I almost started crying!!! On Stage!!!! You get a little raw emotionally on the road.

And Michelle read a great piece about rad-ass teenagers from her Rose Of No Man's Landwhich I love hearing from. I love all the books people have been reading from. Everyone on the tour is a great writer, which makes it fun no matter what the weird circumstances or varying crowds....